Manuscript Studies
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The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies
Bringing manuscript culture, modern technology and people together.
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Announcements and News
- Save the Date for the 2026 Schoenberg Symposium! Stranger Things, November 12–14, 2026. Learn more about this year's symposium.
- Read the Summer 2026 issue of our newsletter here, and subscribe to receive all future monthly updates on our activities.
- The Spring 2026 issue (Vol. 11.1) of Manuscript Studies is now available in Diamond-level Open Access via Project Muse, as are all previous issues.
- Get all the latest updates from Digital Scriptorium and subscribe to the DS Mailing List.
- Learn about how SIMS staff and fellows are using the eScriptorium platform to build machine-learning models that can transcribe handwritten manuscripts from across the world in this recent Penn Libraries News story: Reading manuscripts in the digital space: How the Penn Libraries is advancing Handwritten Text Recognition.
- SIMS is excited to announce the following Visiting Research Fellows for the 2025–2026 academic year: Ali Noori (Fordham University), Hanno Wijsman (Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes), and Emanuele Scieri (University of Glasgow).
- Discover BASIRA, the Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art database, a new digital resource for book history hosted by the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies. Enter the database or visit the project website to learn more.
- Join us every Thursday at 12:00PM Noon EDT / 5pm BST for Coffee with a Codex (via Zoom; registration required).
SIMS Blog Posts
Read about manuscript discoveries, initiatives, and other interesting happenings from SIMS staff.
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Digital Projects
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Publications
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Fellowships
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Teaching
Making use of our collections and expertise in person and remotely
Event Series
Lectures, workshops, and symposia, virtual and in person
Upcoming Events
List
- Workshop
Select Thursday evenings, 5:00 to 7:00 pm
SIMS Graduate Student Manuscript Skills Workshop Series
If you are curious about how you can integrate manuscript sources into your own research, join us for a series of free, informal monthly workshops on essential topics in this field, offered by the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS) at Penn Libraries.
- Vitale II Lab for Book History and Digital Humanities (Rm 623, 6th floor, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library).
Open to Penn Students Only
- Workshop
October 1, 2026
Coffee with a Codex: Treatise on Weight in Arabic
On October 1 (rescheduled from July 2), curator Dot Porter will bring out LJS 386, substantial sections from an illustrated treatise on the measurement of weight, with a historical introduction to theories of gravity and weighing in Greek and Arabic science.
- 12:00pm - 12:30pm
- Online
Open to the Public
- Symposium
November 12-14, 2026
Stranger Things
This year’s topic interrogates the multi-angled intersections of magic, science, religion, and ritual in the pre- and early modern world, especially as manifested in manuscript books, documents, and other inscribed surfaces variously expressed in words, images, diagrams, and annotations.
- Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts; Free Library of Philadelphia & Online
Open to the Public